Roman Law and Contemporary Revelation.
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where the tenets he taught, whatever they the Twelve Tables shows. So joint heir were, and whatever their truth or error, ship of Jews and Gentiles (Eph. iii. 6, were connected in his mind with the Hebr. xi. 9, 1 Pet. iii. 7) cannot be taken ancient documents of his faith as a Jew. out of the ordinary association of inheriting It is clear enough that the first title of the in common. Sound interpretation and Justinian Code on the Trinity came from the scholarly insight require nothing more. If Christian religion a few centuries older than men alone are meant, or men as representa itself; but it is far from clear that we should tive, including women, there was nothing place articles of religion common to both beyond what Asiatic birth and training Old Testament and New under the rubric or suggested. These must be traversed in category of a secular institution so many order to refer facts of inheritance under the Pauline proposition, " no male and centuries younger than they are. This point can be exemplified in minor female, for ye all are one man in Christ particulars. As we are precluded from Jesus " (Gal. iii. 28), to the Roman law. finding any hidden or formative allusion It is difficult to accept the surmise of the to Roman law in an epistle addressed to able writer in the " Contemporary Review," those ignorant of this law, on whom it that a reference to the well-known custom would therefore shed no light, so we are of gathering a patrician's freed slaves at the not at liberty to find one where a usage funeral of their emancipator is hidden in referred to was common to all the ancient Ephcsians i. 12-14. If there is one, it world. It was to the Romans, indeed, that seems very deeply and deftly hidden, and Paul illustrated freedom from former reli quite superfluous. The words are in the gious law by Christ, taking marriage as the revised version : " to the end that we secular analogue. The wife is bound while should be unto the praise of His glory, her husband liveth; but free or discharged we who had before hope in Christ; in by his death, " so that she is no adulteress, whom ye also, having heard the word of though she be joined to another man." So the truth . . . were sealed with the Holy the soul, dead to the law, may be " joined to Spirit of promise, which is an earnest of another." (Ep. Rom. vii. 1-6.) But in our inheritance, unto the redemption of what society — where marriage ever existed God's own possession unto the praise of His glory." Certainly what here and else — was not this true, and with what adhe rents of the religion he taught could he not where is meant by " redemption " is made have used the facts by way of illustration? to accrue to the glory of God; but one Ever since men have exercised the right would never think of a group of freedmen of private property they have had heirs, for at a Latin funeral unless it were ingeniously one's property must go to some one else on and elaborately suggested. In this language has also been imagined his death; forms of thought and language, then, which are simply in keeping with * an allusion to the Pretorian will, the first common Oriental life, are to be interpreted instrument ever scaled " as a mode of authereby. Examples of this are given in thentification in the history ofjurisprudence." to inherit, heirs, inheritance. In ancient (Maine, "Ancient Law.") In itself such an Israel, Eleazar, born in Abraham's house, allusion is far from incredible, as the Romans whether as relative or as servant, and called were wont to enter Asia at Ephesus, and by him " son of his house," or " son of that city became the emporium of a great possession" is a case of ordinary Oriental trade between the western part of the em heirship, with no touch of Roman relations pire and the eastern, and the proconsular about it, as its occurrence so long before capital of the " Asia" of the New Testament.
